


Soon, We'll Be Without the Moon

by Carmarthen



Series: Let's Face the Music and Dance [1]
Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Changing Tenses, Cousin Incest, F/M, Fix-It, Forgiveness, Hopeful Ending, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-OT3, Prohibition, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 21:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3149423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Prohibition New York, Tebaldo Cappallett struggles with his feelings—for his cousin Julie, who's bobbed her hair and is suddenly far too grown-up, and for a boy he met a long time ago and tried to forget.</p><p>This time, nobody dies. But it's close.</p><p>(There is some faintly implied temporary suicidal ideation on Tebaldo's part (much like canon, I think), faint hints of internalized homophobia, and of course Tebaldo and Julie are cousins, if that kind of thing squicks you.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soon, We'll Be Without the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apfelstrudelz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apfelstrudelz/gifts).



> Extremely historically questionable, in part because the real historical conflicts were apparently mostly between rival Italian gangs, but I had already come up with Irish names for the Montagues and I was too lazy to redo them, heh. Also I think Hungarian Lord Capulet would be a terrible mafia boss, so idk, insert one of the more hardass versions, probably Italian ‘verse, I guess.
> 
> I am one of those people who changes names to fit the setting, although I try to make them obvious. If you want a key, there's one at the end.

He’d only done it once, when the Cappelletts had just come over from Italy, when Julie was still Giulia and too young for speakeasies (she was still too young for speakeasies, Tebaldo thought, but in that he was overruled, so he contented himself with glowering at any man who got too friendly with her).

He hadn’t mean to go into that kind of establishment, and the dark-haired boy with the sweet puppyish face probably hadn’t meant to go into that kind of establishment, either. But the kid’s friends had abandoned him, Tebaldo didn’t have any friends, and the moonshine was strong. Tebaldo’s judgement had never been good when he drank.

Nothing happened worth remembering, just a friendly hand in an alleyway, cries held back behind their hands so the cops wouldn’t come sniffing around. That kind of thing happened all the time, and it didn’t make a man a pansy, even if he’d let the boy kiss him afterwards.

It didn’t mean anything, and Tebaldo would have let it blur into the vast mass of his vague regrets, every woman he’d fucked and hated himself for afterwards. He was used to being a sinner. At a certain point, a few more venial sins didn’t even tip the scale.

Except the next time he saw the boy was the night his father died, shot down by some tough when the Irish raided his uncle’s speakeasy.

And he heard his name: _Ronan Montague._

* * *

When she turned fifteen, his cousin Giulia bobbed her hair, shortened her skirts, and told them all to call her Julie. Tebaldo looked at her and still saw the little girl who’d run after him in the streets back home, the girl who’d crept into his room at night here and made him play cards when she was homesick and couldn’t sleep; and he saw the woman she wanted everyone to see.

He didn’t want to see the woman, and most of all, he didn’t want to see her the way he knew other men would see her, innocence ripe for corruption, lips that could be painted red, a skirt that could ride up too high in a dark corner of a dark bar.

Some sins could still tip the scale.

 _You should send her away,_ he told his uncle, to boarding school. _Somewhere far from New York. She’ll be safer._

But his uncle told him to mind his own business, in the tone that said if Tebaldo didn’t stop bothering him he’d get a black eye for it. Giulia—Julie—was a good girl, and she wouldn’t come to any harm, not with the Cappellett boys keeping an eye on her. His aunt was on Julie’s side, anyway, if only because chaperoning her daughter gave her an excuse for drinking until dawn and flirting outrageously with the musicians. If it made her less than adequate as a chaperone, well, Julie had always been a good girl.

It wasn’t _Julie_ who worried Tebaldo.

It was dark-haired Irish boys with too-sweet smiles who snuck into places they shouldn’t, boys whose names he should remember but did, boys whose lips he could still feel in the moment between waking and sleeping, when he couldn’t pretend to himself that he didn’t mind being lonely. Boys who shouldn’t look at his innocent little cousin like that, like she hung the stars in the sky.

It would almost have been better if he’d looked at her the way other men would, because then it would have been easy to get rid of him—a little _talk_ out back, a little beating, the kind of warning any man with sense would take.

But Ronan Montague looked at her the way Tebaldo did, and that Tebaldo could not bear, any more than he could bear the way she looked at him.

They’d scarcely even held hands at the party, but he knew what his aunt would think before he told her.

* * *

Police Commissioner Scaliger’s nephew is in the hospital, stabbed in a fight that never happened in a place that didn’t exist. There’s blood on Tebaldo’s hands that he’d never meant to spill, and no one knows what happened to Tony Capellett’s daughter Julie, or to Ronan Montague. There are rumors—there always are—but Tebaldo learned not to listen to those years ago.

He hopes they’re gone, far from here, to somewhere with open skies. Somewhere they can breathe. For him, there’s only flight. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to breathe again, no matter how far he runs.

It’s not quite a surprise when he rounds a hedge in the garden, rucksack slung over his shoulder, and nearly runs into Ronan. In the dark Ronan looks different, harder, already more of the hound and less of the puppy, and he holds his hand just out of sight, as if there’s a knife in it. Tebaldo knows he ought to feel something, but the world seems to have slowed to a crawl, everything cool and dull, wrapped in cotton-wool. He can’t bring himself to care if Ronan does mean to knife him, here in his uncle’s back garden. It would be a bit of an inconvenience for the servants, and his aunt would weep, but at least it would be over.

"How’s Marco?" Tebaldo asks, because he does want to know first, because maybe knowing will help with the sick feeling that’s been eating away at him since that morning.

"He’ll live," Ronan says after a moment, still not smiling. "No thanks to you."

Tebaldo doesn’t say he’s sorry. He knows from bitter experience that it never helps. Instead he just drops his eyes for a moment.

"Who were you trying to kill?" Ronan asks, still in that hard voice that sounds wrong coming from his mouth. He’d always been too soft for this life; Tebaldo should have seen it, should have known he wasn’t that kind of threat.

The answer that bubbles to the surface, catches on the tip of his tongue, is the one he can’t ever say, so he just shrugs and says, “I don’t want to kill anyone.”

It’s true enough.

He doesn’t expect Julie coming out of the darkness behind Ronan, big-eyed and pale in a sober dress, no makeup, her hair flattened out of its wave, doesn’t expect her to drop her bag and fling her arms around him, burying her face in his chest. “You’re alive,” she says, and whatever look is on Tebaldo’s face, it makes something in Ronan’s eyes soften. Tebaldo closes his eyes, and breathes, and tries not to think about how Julie’s hair smells. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

Guilt cuts at him, slicing through the sick feeling. This he knows he deserves, because he had, but he doesn’t know how to apologize to Julie either, doesn’t dare admit to her that he isn’t the man she thought he was. He’s not fit to be anyone’s knight in shining armor, least of all hers, but he can’t bring himself to push her away.

"Come with us," Ronan says, abruptly. "You don’t have to stay forever. Just—you don’t have to run alone. Come with us."

And Tebaldo sees that his hands are empty, open. There was never a knife.

There has never been a knife, not in Ronan’s hands. Julie smiles and slips her hand into his, like she used to, and he follows her lead, down through the garden, half in a daze.

Down past the trees, over the river, he can see dawn breaking.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Irving Berlin's "Let's Face the Music and Dance."
> 
> **Character Key:**
> 
> Tebaldo Cappallett - Tybalt  
> Giulia "Julie" Cappallett - Julia Capulet  
> Ronan Montague - Romeo Montague  
> Police Commissioner Scaliger - Prince Escalcus  
> Marco - Mercutio


End file.
